UPDATE: Oregon State Police arrested Tommy L. Ross Jr. on Tuesday after he was released from the Clallam County jail that morning, according to Port Angeles Police Chief Brian Smith.
Smith said Ross is being held in the Clackamas County, Ore., jail on a warrant issued out of Clallam County.
Ross was released Tuesday in Port Angeles after Clallam Superior Court Judge Brian Coughenour signed an order dismissing charges against Ross that grew from a murder charge filed against him 38 years ago after the killing of 20-year-old Janet Bowcutt in 1978.
Ross’ lawyer, Lane Wolfley of Port Angeles, said Ross was heading straight to Los Angeles, Calif., where he would care for his mother.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols later Tuesday filed a notice of appeal with the state Court of Appeals on the dismissal of charges.
He also filed a motion of emergency stay of the dismissal with the appeals court with the intention of reinstating Ross’ $1.5 million bail so Nichols’ office can continue murder trial preparations while the speedy trial issues that prompted Ross’ release are resolved by appeals court.
Nichols said Tuesday night that the appeals court commissioner reinstated conditions of release on Ross pending a decision on the stay.
As a result, Nichols applied for an arrest warrant with Clallam Superior Court, which was granted.
More information will be posted here as it becomes available.
OUR EARLIER REPORT:
PORT ANGELES — After spending all but one day in the past 40 years behind bars, 60-year-old Tommy L. Ross Jr. was driven from the Clallam County jail Tuesday morning a free man.
Family members picked him up in the sally port at the jail and drove off as he sat in the back seat with a large, white plastic bag of belongings on his lap.
Ross’ lawyer, Lane Wolfley of Port Angeles, said the man accused of first- and second-degree murder in the strangling death of 20-year-old Janet Bowcutt of Port Angeles in April 1978 was heading straight to Los Angeles, Calif., where he will care for his mother.
Ross “was very grateful” about the dismissal of charges, Wolfley said.
At least one of Bowcutt’s family members who attended the hearing sobbed as it ended.
“It’s tearing me up inside,” Janet Bowcutt’s son, Jimmy, said as a phalanx of his mother’s relatives exited the courtroom and shuffled past a metal detector set up for the hearing. He had been 6 months old when he was found on a bed in his mother’s Port Angeles apartment while she was lifeless on the floor.
Ross’ trip outside the confines of imprisonment came after Superior Court Judge Brian Coughenour signed an order Tuesday dismissing charges against Ross that grew from a murder charge filed against him 38 years ago.
Friends and family of Janet Bowcutt, who was killed in 1978, listen to Ross’ release proceeding Tuesday in Clallam County Superior Court. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
Coughenour last week granted a motion by Wolfley to dismiss the charges, agreeing that Ross’ constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated.
The order Coughenour signed Tuesday finalized that action — and kickstarted more legal maneuvering in the case.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols later Tuesday filed a notice of appeal with the state Court of Appeals on the dismissal of charges, he said Tuesday afternoon.
He also filed a motion of emergency stay of the dismissal with the appeals court.
The purpose: reinstate Ross’ $1.5 million bail so Nichols’ office can continue murder trial preparations while the speedy trial issues that prompted Ross’ release are resolved by appeals court.
“I strongly disagree with the judge’s decision in this case,” Nichols said.
Nichols’ appeal “stands no chance of success,” Wolfley predicted in an interview.
“This represents the most egregious violation of the constitutional right to a speedy trial in the history of American jurisprudence,” he said.
“There are no facts that come close to the facts in this case as far as their seriousness.
“There is only one thing that Judge Coughenour could have done and he did that, and any other judge in my opinion would have done the same thing.”
Ross and his family members could not be reached for comment.
Defense attorney Lane Wolfley discusses the Tommy Ross case outside the Clallam County Courthouse on Tuesday in Port Angeles. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
In the 30-minute court proceeding that had just ended, Coughenour rebuffed arguments from Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Steve Johnson to alter points in Coughenour’s ruling, such as adding that the former prosecuting attorney’s office had pursued extradition of Ross from a prison in Canada when there was no documentation of the effort.
“The issue is whether it was attempted in any way, shape or form, and it wasn’t,” Coughenour said.
Coughenour also reiterated his reasoning behind dismissing the charges.
Bowcutt was murdered in her Eighth Street apartment three weeks before 26-year-old Janice Forbes of Victoria was strangled in a similar manner.
Ross was in Los Angeles as a murder suspect connected to a third woman’s death in 1978 while awaiting possible extradition to Clallam County on a murder charge connected to Bowcutt’s death, according to court records.
That’s when Prosecuting Attorney Grant Meiner, later a Superior Court judge, allowed Ross to be extradited to Canada to face a murder charge for Forbes’ death, according to court records.
Ross, who is illiterate, waived extradition to return to Victoria, B.C., in January 1979 without an attorney present and with Meiner’s consent, and with Meiner believing that according to a verbal agreement with the Crown counsel that Ross would be returned to Clallam County as soon as his trial in Victoria was concluded.
That never happened, even though treaties between the U.S. and Canada would have allowed his extradition, Coughenour said.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Brian Coughenour looks at his notes during dismissal proceedings in the murder case of Tommy Ross Jr. on Tuesday. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
On Nov. 15, 2016, the day Ross was released from a Canadian prison after serving 38 years, he was arrested on a charge of murder at the border at Blaine.
He was transported to Clallam County, and booked on $1.5 million, incarcerated on that bail amount until minutes before his brother’s car backed out of the Sheriff’s Office sally port at 10:35 a.m. Tuesday and he was driven away.
“The key issue here was that Mr. Ross was sent to a foreign country within hours of the Canadian authorities making that request based on a waiver of extradition that was signed without counsel or without any proceedings whatsoever,” Coughenour said.
“Subsequent things that happened are not of great weight.
“That is the key. That is the issue that I believe created this problem, that he was sent to a foreign country before he was sent here.
“Frankly, I don’t understand what the rush was.”
Had Ross been sent back to Clallam County, “there wouldn’t have been a speedy trial problem,” Coughenour said.
“Clallam County could have brought prosecution in 1978, and it didn’t happen.”
Fingerprint evidence and the eyewitness account of a neighbor of Bowcutt’s linked Ross to Bowcutt’s murder, according to court records.
Defense attorneys and a team from the Clallam County Prosecutor’s Office convene before Superior Court Judge Brian Coughenour on Tuesday in Port Angeles. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
During Ross’ incarceration in Clallam County, DNA evidence was extracted from a hair found on Bowcutt’s sweater after she was murdered that also linked Ross to Bowcutt’s murder.
Wolfley said in an interview last week that the hair was from Ross’ family group, that Bowcutt worked with Ross’ brother, meaning the hair could be Ross’ brother’s, and that several other hairs were found on her sweater.
Throughout the 38 years following Bowcutt’s murder, factors that prejudiced Ross’ ability to defend himself include a lost or destroyed fingerprint card, a doorknob on which a fingerprint of Ross’ was allegedly found not being secured, and fingerprint examiners and investigators who are now dead or unable to testify, Coughenour said.
In addition, eyewitnesses’ memories were faded or compromised.
Nichols and Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict said a “safety plan” went into effect following Ross’ release that included participation of the Sheriff’s Office and the Sequim and Port Angeles police departments.
The safety plan will ensure that Tommy Ross does not reoffend and that no one hurts Ross while he is in Washington state, Benedict said.
“That’s going to mean that there is a police presence that will be on him,” he added.
Benedict said there have been “vague threats” to Ross on social media but nothing on which law enforcement can take action.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
Tommy Ross Jr. enters Clallam County Superior Court in Port Angeles prior to his release from custody Tuesday. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
